Dear Minister Green,
Can you confirm that the existing regulations for the application of pesticides in Tasmania will remain in their current form for the foreseeable future, as per this ABC announcement?
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/tas/content/2012/06/s3521296.htm?site=northtas
If this report is accurate, can you also confirm that the Minister for Health has agreed to these arrangements and that the Federal and State Governments will carry the cost of the imposed extra financial burden due to the human and environmental harm caused by this inaction?
Sincerely,
Dr Alison Bleaney
Earlier on Tasmanian Times:
• New study queries pesticide safety levels. State land and waterways ‘still poisoned’
Clive Stott http://www.cleanairtas.com :
‘”High pollution increases the risk of repeated heart attacks in cardiac patients by over 40 precent, a Tel Aviv University researcher has claimed.
Air pollution, which posed a serious danger to the environment, is also a major health risk, associated with respiratory infections, lung cancer and heart disease.
The researcher has concluded that not only does air pollution impact cardiac events such as heart attack and stroke, but it also causes repeated episodes over the long term.
Cardiac patients living in high pollution areas were found to be over 40 percent more likely to have a second heart attack when compared to patients living in low pollution areas, according to Dr. Yariv Gerber of TAU’s School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine.
“We know that like smoking cigarettes, pollution itself provokes the inflammatory system. If you are talking about long-term exposure and an inflammatory system that is irritated chronically, pollution may well be involved in the progression of atrial sclerosis that manifests in cardiac events,” Dr. Gerber said
Air quality was measured at 21 monitoring stations in areas where the patients lived, and analysed by a group of researchers at the Technion in Haifa.
After adjusting for other factors such as socio-economic status and disease severity, the researchers identified an association between pollution and negative clinical outcomes, including mortality and recurrent vascular events such as heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
According to Dr. Gerber, the true impact of air pollution might be even stronger than this study shows.
“Our method of assessing exposure does have limitations. Because we are using data from monitoring stations, it’s a crude estimate of exposure, which most likely leads to an underestimation of the association,” he warned.
He estimated that air pollution could have double the negative impact with more precise measurement.
The results of the study not only indicate a health benefit for a public policy that curtails air pollution caused by industrial emissions and second hand smoke, but also call for heightened awareness by clinicians.”
Here in Tasmania we have been subjected to long term forestry smoke (over 50 years). We are also being subjected to smoke from land owners with blocks over 2000 square meters. We are also using similar air monitoring stations, so we could expect similar outcomes.
On top of that, there is a proposed pulp mill for one of our worst valleys for pollution in this state, the Tamar valley.
It is time for our law makers to act. Ignorance is no excuse.
More details can be found at http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/diseases/pollution-ups-risk-of-repeated-heart-attacks_17303.html
